Many schools lack libraries, librarians

Saturday

Feb 2, 2013 at 2:00 PMFeb 5, 2013 at 12:41 PM

In Worcester, six out of 34 elementary schools, plus an alternative school that serves elementary students, do not have functioning libraries at all. One open library isn't staffed. Of the rest, 13 are run exclusively by volunteers, one by a combination of volunteers and work-study students, nine are run at least in part by other school staff, and three have part-time professional librarians, two of whom are assisted by teachers. Even in the suburbs, weekly library sessions with a librarian are not a given.

By Jacqueline Reis TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

At 1:40 p.m. Nov. 30, 16 members of Kerri Lewis' kindergarten class walked and wiggled their way onto the rug in front of librarian Nancy Kellner at Marguerite E. Peaslee Elementary School in Northboro. The library was crowded with books, and the children sat down and looked toward Ms. Kellner, who was in a rocking chair beside an easel that held a giant pad of paper and two books. One, she told the class, takes place in a town, the other in a city.

She asked the students to list differences between towns and cities.

“Cities are very big,” said Lydia Reineke, who was wearing a birthday hat. They have “towers” and buses, said other students.

“Towers are big,” said Bruno Cruz, and many other students added their ideas.Ms. Kellner started reading the first book, “Paperboy” by Dav Pilkey, and stopped frequently for discussion; there was always someone with their hand up.

After a second story, it was borrowing time. Kids fanned out and choose a book to take home for the week, provided they remembered to bring last week's book back. Alex Shaw was excited as usual and chose something from the Star Wars collection.

“Is that a dog book?” one of his friends asked, pointing to a picture in it.

“No, it's Chewbacca!” Alex said. The best part of library, he said, is “I get to borrow whatever books we want.”

Elizabeth H. Nasser, a parent volunteer in the library, said her daughter, Sophie Kopstein gets the same thrill. “We have thousands of books at home, and it doesn't matter. You have to get that new book.”

Not every elementary school student experiences that.

In Worcester, six out of 34 elementary schools, plus an alternative school that serves elementary students, do not have functioning libraries at all. One open library isn't staffed. Of the rest, 13 are run exclusively by volunteers, one by a combination of volunteers and work-study students, nine are run at least in part by other school staff, and three have part-time professional librarians, two of whom are assisted by teachers.

Even in the suburbs, weekly library sessions with a librarian are not a given. Wachusett Regional School District cut its elementary school librarians this fiscal year for lack of money. At Floral Street School in Shrewsbury, students in Grades 1-3 go to media classes in the library weekly, but fourth graders go only every two weeks to check out books.

“There is no state standard for school libraries,” said Katherine E. Lowe, executive director of the Lunenburg-based Massachusetts School Library Association. Her organization is hoping to change that on the state level and is working with state Rep. Sean P. Garballey, D-Arlington, who for the second time has filed a bill to create a commission to study the state of school libraries.

“Many times in local school districts, librarian positions are the first ones cut, so in many cases, you may have one town that actually has full-time librarians. In another town, you don't,” Mr. Garballey said. “We should figure out what's going on in our school library programs across the state… I personally believe that they are very, very important when it comes to the future of education.”

In districts like Worcester where fewer than half of third graders read proficiently and where 72 percent of students are from low-income families, the need for some extra help with vocabulary and reading is particularly acute. Children from low-income families start preschool with vocabularies that are already millions of words smaller than those of children from working-class and professional families, according to child development experts Betty Hart's and Todd R. Risley's 1995 book, “Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young Children.” And that gap does not begin to consider the almost one-third of Worcester students who are not proficient in English.

Worcester students who do not have a library in their school cannot necessarily walk to a branch of the Worcester Public Library. The public library, which used to have seven branches in addition to its main location, now has two: the Frances Perkins Branch in Greendale and the Great Brook Valley Branch. Even the city's three Carnegie libraries, those historic gifts from a man who believed there was no honor in dying rich, have barely survived. One, the Perkins branch, is still a library. A second, the Quinsigamond branch, became the cafeteria of Quinsigamond School, which has a large library elsewhere in the building but no librarian. The third, the South Worcester branch, was split into two apartments.

Another former branch was at Tatnuck Magnet School. The branch and the school library closed, but the school library reopened through the efforts of parent volunteers last month.

The public library does have some other, less-traditional branches. Libby, the public library's “mobile branch,” has helped reach schools and neighborhoods, and the library considers its website an “e-branch,” said Head Librarian Wei Jeng-Chu.

Libby's stops include Elm Park Community School, which hopes to open its own library this month, and the neighborhood near Columbus Park Preparatory School. Columbus Park Principal Jessica M. Boss said her students have benefited from Libby's visits, but if money were no object, she would love to have a library at her school. It once had one but lost it to space and budget constraints. “We have plenty of books and adequate access to all different types of literacy materials. However, we don't have a card catalog and sign out,” Ms. Boss said.

There's also the matter of a librarian. “You need someone that can come and work it,” she said.

Ms. Kellner, the librarian at Peaslee in Northboro, is familiar with the lack of librarians. She used to be a banker, but when her own children started school in the early and mid 1990s, there were no librarians in Northboro elementary schools. She volunteered, and then she went to the University of Rhode Island for a master's degree in library science. Northboro hired her in 1998 as it started adding librarians back. At first, Ms. Kellner covered two schools and did not see kindergartners. She has been full time at Peaslee since 2001.

The difference between a non-librarian reading stories in a library and what she does is that she has a curriculum, she said. She has a teaching degree, as Massachusetts school librarians must, and teaches research skills in classrooms in addition to collaborating with teachers in other ways. She also keeps the library current.

“When I inherited this library, the books were out of date, and the books were not on topic at all,” she said.

Many school libraries have survived through the sheer will of volunteers, like Rachel T. Bromage, the octogenarian bibliophile whose dedication has earned her her own parking spot at Quinsigamond School. She and three other volunteers keep the library open four days a week. “There's nobody else to do it,” she said.

“A lot of these children do not have access to a public library… This (school library) is fantastic, because it gives them an opportunity to explore our books and read, which is such an important part of anything.”

While legislation might draw attention to differences in school libraries, the most likely source of improvement for Worcester's elementary school libraries is the community, not the state or traditional school funding. School Superintendent Melinda J. Boone included $2.3 million for full-time librarians in each of district's 33 elementary schools on a recent list designed to illustrate what it would take to make Worcester the schools of choice. But that list added up to $27 million, and Ms. Boone said her priorities for any new money right now are more staff to teach English language learners and students with disabilities.

That leaves the door open for others to take action, and some already have. Union Hill School opened its library with help from student members of a Destination Imagination team at Worcester Academy and contributions from businesses and foundations. Patty Eppinger of Grafton, whose daughter was on that team and whose husband, Fred, is president and chief executive of The Hanover Insurance Group, is using some of the momentum from that project to help Burncoat Street Preparatory School get its library off the ground. She, like School Committee member John F. Monfredo, who organizes an annual summer reading drive, regularly collects and distributes donated books.

“I went to Catholic school for 12 years, so we were always resource-constrained, and we had a tiny little library, but we went there every week,” Mrs. Eppinger said.

She is on the board of the Worcester Education Collaborative, which tries to involve the community in improving public schools. The collaborative is the city's lead contact for the Grade-Level Reading Communities Network, a national organization focusing on third grade reading proficiency. A 2010 Annie E. Casey Foundation report found that 74 percent of students who are not proficient readers by the end of third grade will struggle in school and fail to earn a diploma, according to the collaborative. To that end, the network is focusing on school readiness, summer learning loss and chronic absenteeism. The collaborative has “added a fourth component, which is getting books in the hands of children,” Ms. Carey said.

The business community seems to have an appetite for it. “It seems to be something that really resonates with them, because it's clear, it's tangible,” said Jennifer Davis Carey, the collaborative's executive director.

In theory, people, businesses or institutions could contribute anything. They could give a book (Kelly J. Harris, the librarian at Chandler Elementary Community School and Burncoat Street Prep, has a wish list on Amazon), endow a librarian position (one librarian costs close to $70,000 a year on average, including benefits) or pay for a modular classroom for a school that does not have space for a library. (The cost of installing and leasing a small, basic modular unit for a year starts at approximately $45,000, according to Glenn A. Cort, executive vice president at Triumph Modular in Littleton, which makes a range of temporary and permanent buildings for lease and sale.)But if the next Andrew Carnegie does not materialize, people concerned about elementary school libraries will have to take a different tack. One idea floated in the city includes the possibility of a small pilot project involving a few schools, private money for new materials, and public money for library staff.

When City Manager Michael V. O'Brien was asked about this prospect, he said it might make sense in a city like Worcester that is richer in community partners than public dollars.

“We know how important reading readiness is, particularly at the third grade level… It is a citywide goal,” he said. “So let's get our libraries back in our elementary schools… through unprecedented partnerships. Our Public Library team has the expertise, willingness and technology, the schools have tremendous faculty and the space, and our community partners have funding and resources…

“It will have the equivalent value of the millions of dollars sought for our schools but done in a manner that recognizes there is more than one way to get to solutions when we all share in the lift.”

Anyone wanting to see more public money spent on elementary school libraries will have to work toward that in the next few months. Ms. Boone will submit her budget proposal to the School Committee on May 3, and the committee and the City Council, which sets the bottom line for the school department, normally vote on the budget before the end of June.

In the meantime, some students will make several more visits to their school library, and some will be lucky enough to have books at home from other sources. But Worcester's two elementary school librarians, Ms. Harris and Michael J. Garvey (son of the former superintendent), know that not every child is that lucky. At the three schools where the librarians work, between 88 and 99 percent of students are from low-income families.

“The kids are just overjoyed to have a library at their school,” Ms. Harris said. “They really don't have any books at home, and a lot of them don't even have transportation to the library, so the book that they take from our school library is often the only book they have in the house.